I am really tight on money but basically if you look at my signature below, thats the specs where I am used to so I don't expect anything slower than it. I was originally set to buy a mac but they are so expensive for their price compared to their windows counterpart. I mean going to a mac means sacrificing some softwares that I use and at the same time at a high price.

What is a good laptop to buy? Am I just falling into this illusion that the mac pricings are expensive? I will not pay more than $1000 for a laptop.

It is even proven. Maybe if you get a Mac Mini compared to a laptop. But that is the only comparison that is even close. Even the lowest end Macbook starts at over $1,000 when you can get a decent budget Windows laptop for $600-$800. So i dont know where you get this information from. But even looking at the Apple site: